Ilfochrome in-camera prints?

[mandonbossi]

Hello, I realise that this topic has been touched on before but I couldn't quite find the information I was after by searching previous links.. I was hoping to shoot some in camera ilfochrome and I currently only have a 5x4 camera and was wondering how hard it would be to cut down a 8 x 10 sheet (as this seems to be the smallest it is made in) and if I was able to process this size in a Jobo processor and what is the best one to get? Also, how long is this process likely to take? There is a lab in Sydney who does this (I am in Melbourne) and the smallest they are prepared to take is the 8 x 10 size (for fear of a smaller print getting caught in the machine). I quite like the idea of somehow being able to see it somewhat "instantly" though, with a Jobo processor. Is this possible? Am completely new to this process so any information would be a great help!

Am also looking at getting a 8 x 10 camera soon, so was wondering what is the best processor for that size?

Thanks so much, greatly appreciated! Best Regards Mandon

[Renato Tonelli]

Would you consider processing it yourself? You would need a tube (frequently on ebay) and the chemistry kit. Ilfochrome processing is very easy - three chemical steps. The drawbacks are the expense and finding the chemistry.

[Wayne]

Hello, I realise that this topic has been touched on before but I couldn't quite find the information I was after by searching previous links.. I was hoping to shoot some in camera ilfochrome and I currently only have a 5x4 camera and was wondering how hard it would be to cut down a 8 x 10 sheet (as this seems to be the smallest it is made in) and if I was able to process this size in a Jobo processor and what is the best one to get? Also, how long is this process likely to take? There is a lab in Sydney who does this (I am in Melbourne) and the smallest they are prepared to take is the 8 x 10 size (for fear of a smaller print getting caught in the machine). I quite like the idea of somehow being able to see it somewhat "instantly" though, with a Jobo processor. Is this possible? Am completely new to this process so any information would be a great help!

Am also looking at getting a 8 x 10 camera soon, so was wondering what is the best processor for that size?

Thanks so much, greatly appreciated! Best Regards Mandon



I dont see why you couldn't cut down 8x10s to 4x5, but you'd probably have to make a jig or something sort of guides to do it accurately in total darkness. Probably best to make sure 1/4 of an 8x10 fits in your holders snugly before cutting a whole box full. :)

I have never shot Ilfochrome in camera myself. Maybe thats what I'll do with my remaining sheets and old chems, as I've pretty much decided to give up on it due to cost.

I dont know anything about jobos, so can't help you there. But if you plan to do a llot of 8x10 you probably want to look into a roller transport Cap 40 or even better, an ICP-42.

[mandonbossi]

Hi, Thanks for the responses! If i was to buy one of these processors, does it only do ilfochrome or am I able to process, say 8 x 10 colour negative film in it as well? What is the best processor for doing this?

Also, does anyone know what the cost might be for

* Processing a 8x10 Ilfochrome print?
* Processing a 5x4 Ilfochrome print?

* Processing a 8x10 colour negative?
* Processing a 5x4 colour negative?

Ok, thanks so much again, greatly appreciated!

Cheers Mandon

[Bill_1856]

Why?

[mandonbossi]

Oh and one more, if I was to just buy the Jobo Drum Expert 3005, will that let me develop 8x10 and 5x4 negatives (and ilfochrome positive prints with different chemicals)? Is the only difference is that it is a more "manual" process? If that was the case, I would probably just go with that... If it only works on a processor, is there a more manual process i could go with? I don't really have the funds to be spending on something I am not even sure will work.. Ok, thanks again. Cheers Mandon

[Nathan Potter]

Well yes, you can be sure that it will work - with sufficient care. Doing Ilfochrome prints in 4X5 is - well - a bit lunatic but I'm sure you can do it.

Ciba made a 4X5 drum that was about 1.5 inches in diameter that might work OK. In case of the Ciba 8X10 drum I'd be afraid that the 4X5 paper would not stay put, but float around and cause problems. You need a drum that will captivate the print pretty much against the wall of the tube.

The trick for in camera Ilfochrome is finding the correct color balance. You can start with the recommendation on the box but you'll really have to adjust that with the correct CC filters as a function of your illumination source. I used a CC matrix and exposed a test print through that and look for a neutral grey from a cyan/magenta/yellow mix. You won't need much chemistry for one 4X5 as long as you keep the print fairly firmly against the wall of the tube - emulsion side out.

A 16 X 20 print now costs me about US $50 including paper and chemistry. So a 4X5 is a fraction of that, about 1/16, or about $3 to $4.

Experimentation is grand fun - I hope you have plenty of hair to pull out! When done well such Ilfochromes are quite spectacular.

Nate Potter, Austin TX.

[mandonbossi]

Hi Bill_1856, I don't understand what your question refers to? Can you please explain your response? Thanks Mandon

[mandonbossi]

Nathan, Thanks so much for the response, was just wondering if you knew of the BTZS system and whether this would work for such a project? Also, would I be able to process color negatives in that system as well? Ok, thanks so much again. Cheers Mandon

[Bill_1856]

Hi Bill_1856, I don't understand what your question refers to? Can you please explain your response? Thanks Mandon

Why would you do this?

[Steve Smith]

Why would you do this?

Because you want to.


Steve.

[gliderbee]

I like this idea, and sorry for hijacking the thread, but it can be useful for the OP also: at what ISO would the Ilfochrome paper have to be rated ? With the price of that paper, you want to be as close as possible to the "right" exposure the first time around ..

Stefan.

[Renato Tonelli]

Why?

Why not?


As far as processing goes you might look into a Paterson Orbital as it can be used for smaller size papers.

As for the cost, you will have to figure it out by pricing the materials where you are; in the USA it would cost approximately $5.00 per 8x10 sheet ($1.25 per 4x5).

I've seen samples of Ilfochrome paper exposed in the camera - beautiful! I am tempted to do it with my 8x10 camera. I am well set up for processing.

Also, search on the photo.net and apug.org forums: I've seen discussions in the not-too-distant past about shooting this material in the camera.

[Drew Wiley]

The biggest problem is simply getting the filtration right. And putting these over the
lens is going to mean a very slow exposure and some loss of sharpness. Ciba cuts
easily on a trimmer. And you could simply develop it in a little Nikkor tank or Jobo hand
tank, or a rotary processing drum. Just don't rev it up too high. I wouldn't use an
open BTZS tube because you'd waste a great deal of expensive chemistry putting it in a tray, and would be more a risk of breathing the nasty bleach fumes.

[Wayne]

Regarding speed I seem to recall others finding it to be about 6 or 12, but I could be wrong.

[Nathan Potter]

mandonbossi, what Drew said. I have not used the BTZS tubes and would not like the Ilfo chemistry in an open tray. I suppose it would work. Although in any of the small diameter tubes I worry about the small radius of fold to insert the paper dry. Even a crude taco technique would work in a tray in complete darkness.

You need to think about temperature control though, it really should be within about +/- 1 degree C or better. All my Ilfochrome work is done in Ciba drums partially immersed in a temperature controlled bath and rotated with a Besseler unit remounted upside down on top of the drum. A homemade rig from 3/8 inch PVC.

I'd have to dig out the effective ASA for the paper I used but I think Wayne is in the ballpark.

BTW my experiments were done through a hole in my old darkroom wall on 11X14 paper using one film holder. A simple plywood box and (I hate to say it) but the bellows was a section of a rubber glove from a glove box. Illumination was from halogen lamps so the filter pack was similar to that listed on the box. Subjects were macro stills of various items using enlarging lenses.

Nate Potter, Austin TX.

[Drew Wiley]

For studio still-life shots you would put color correction gels over the light source
rather than over the camera lens, and that way not degrade the image quality. If you have a color enlarger and good color meter, you could test filatration values for
the paper, the replicate those on the set. Each package of Ciba has a correction factor listed relative to the mfg standards, but you need to have a additional correction factor for your own setup established by testing. And the color balance of
the paper changes over time. Once it is thawed, try to use all your paper within six
months or preferably a lot less, or it will become unpredictable and useless.

[Erik Larsen]

You can use the jobo single drum that holds 1 2509 reel. I do not recall the #, but it has ridges to hold the paper. I have done 4x5 Ciba contacts with this setup and use 20ml of chemistry. It works well.
Regards
Erik

[Merg Ross]

In 1979 my friends, Ron Lamkey and Rowland Hill, used my darkroom for their Cibachrome in-camera experiments. The results were published in the Feb. 1980 issue of Peterson's PhotoGraphic. If you can find a copy of that issue, many questions of the process are answered. The resulting images had a special and appealing look.

Ron and Rowland had been in contact with Ilford at the time, and were given a suggested EI of 2.5. Their conclusion was a much lower working EI of .2 (that is point two). Good luck, the resullts can be wonderful!

[Marco Annaratone]

A 16in x 12in in-camera cibachrome print.

http://www.1827.eu/orchid.jpg

[Renato Tonelli]

Wow! Bravo!
That's what I'm talking about...

Can you tells us what the EI was and the lighting conditions. Did you sue a filter on the lens?

[Leigh]

I've done many many hundreds of Cibachrome prints, processed in a Jobo CPE-2 machine.

These were all from Kodachrome originals, not direct in-camera prints.

Some of the Jobo drums for the CPE-2 will handle 4x5 paper. They have little clips that separate the sheets, arranged around the outer wall just like larger size paper. The 2509(N) holder or its predecessor 1202(IIRC) could be used, but I'd worry that the amount of chemistry available would not be adequate for a large number of prints.

One potential problem is the high contrast of the Cibrachrome material. It required making a low-density mask using B&W masking film to avoid blowing out the highlights. This would argue for using it in-camera only with low-contrast subjects.

There was talk of bringing out a lower-contrast version of the paper, but I dropped out of the loop before that happened, if it ever did.

- Leigh

[Marco Annaratone]

Hi,

it was under very strong tungsten light. This and the short exposure time allowed me to avoid using any filter and I rated the paper at 1 ISO. You can normally play with the sensitivity between 0.5 ISO and 2 ISO.

Shooting under natural as opposed to artificial light gets much, much more complicated, if you want excellent color rendition. The problem is the presence of a dependency between color shift and exposure time. You start with a pack of filters and some exposure time (an excellent color meter is a must), but the filters increase the exposure time, so you have to compensate for color shift with some more filtering, which may introduce some additional exposure time, which then introduces some more color shift, etc. After two or three iterations you converge to a pair (exposure time, filter combination) that puts you in peace with yourself ... more or less :D

Some more details at the very end of this long paper from 2007

http://www.resonantlink.com/GU.pdf

Have fun!

Cheers,

[LF_rookie_to_be]

Because you want to.


Steve.

Or, in case of this guy, because you can:*

http://lightbox.time.com/2011/04/27/uncomfortably-close-richard-learoyds-presences/#1

*get hold of paper rolls and chemicals in the first place, not to mention pay for them.
Impossible in my neck of the woods when it comes to the latter.
Good luck and show us the result.

Marco, that's beautiful. Congratulations.

[atlcruiser]

Hi,

it was under very strong tungsten light. This and the short exposure time allowed me to avoid using any filter and I rated the paper at 1 ISO. You can normally play with the sensitivity between 0.5 ISO and 2 ISO.

Shooting under natural as opposed to artificial light gets much, much more complicated, if you want excellent color rendition. The problem is the presence of a dependency between color shift and exposure time. You start with a pack of filters and some exposure time (an excellent color meter is a must), but the filters increase the exposure time, so you have to compensate for color shift with some more filtering, which may introduce some additional exposure time, which then introduces some more color shift, etc. After two or three iterations you converge to a pair (exposure time, filter combination) that puts you in peace with yourself ... more or less :D

Some more details at the very end of this long paper from 2007

http://www.resonantlink.com/GU.pdf

Have fun!

Cheers,

Marco, thanks for the link to your paper...i enjoyed the read :)

[Kimberly Anderson]

Just bought some very very outdated Cibachrome material last night. Thinking about moving to 'color in-camera monotypes' instead of the 'black and white in-camera monotypes' I have done in the past.

[Asher Kelman]

Hi,

it was under very strong tungsten light. This and the short exposure time allowed me to avoid using any filter and I rated the paper at 1 ISO. You can normally play with the sensitivity between 0.5 ISO and 2 ISO.

Shooting under natural as opposed to artificial light gets much, much more complicated, if you want excellent color rendition. The problem is the presence of a dependency between color shift and exposure time. You start with a pack of filters and some exposure time (an excellent color meter is a must), but the filters increase the exposure time, so you have to compensate for color shift with some more filtering, which may introduce some additional exposure time, which then introduces some more color shift, etc. After two or three iterations you converge to a pair (exposure time, filter combination) that puts you in peace with yourself ... more or less :D

Some more details at the very end of this long paper from 2007

http://www.resonantlink.com/GU.pdf

Have fun!

Cheers,

Marco,

Your writing is both engaging, friendly and informative. I'm so impressed with the amount of detail you have generously shared.

Have you now made Ilfochrome printing routine. For example, if you use a color meter, can you now choose your filters and be pretty sure of your result?

Do you still use you combo of Jobo tanks?

I'd love to see some of your pictures sometime!

Asher

[Asher Kelman]

........

The trick for in camera Ilfochrome is finding the correct color balance. You can start with the recommendation on the box but you'll really have to adjust that with the correct CC filters as a function of your illumination source. I used a CC matrix and exposed a test print through that and look for a neutral grey from a cyan/magenta/yellow mix.

Nathan,

I hope you are still making Ciba in camera pictures.

What CC matrix? Is it one sheet of material and do you place it over a grey card. If it's done that way then the light is filtered going in towards the grey card and then a second time, reflected off the card and coming to the camera. So I wonder what the physical set up is. It should be that one would use 1/2 the values obtained.

Also can you give examples of exposure details for over cast outdoors, for example or indoors with window light or even flash or tungsten light perhaps?

Do you ever use 80-85 series filters too and what about color meter readings?

Thanks,

Asher

[Drew Wiley]

We're actually talking about two different sets of reciprocity problems here. Long term
exposure cc shift for Ciba starts kicking in around 1 min or so, and significantly increases around 2 min exp. This would pertain to still-life shots etc. There are published correction factors; but I found them pretty unreliable due to batch variation and aging in the paper. High-intensity instantaneous flash exposure is a whole different animal, and I have no idea what to expect. Properly filtered hot lights used
between 10 sec and 50 sec would be the most consistent.

[Steve Smith]

Why would you do this?

Why not?

http://www.timhunkin.com/61_cameras.htm


Steve.

[Asher Kelman]

We're actually talking about two different sets of reciprocity problems here. Long term
exposure cc shift for Ciba starts kicking in around 1 min or so, and significantly increases around 2 min exp. This would pertain to still-life shots etc. There are published correction factors; but I found them pretty unreliable due to batch variation and aging in the paper. High-intensity instantaneous flash exposure is a whole different animal, and I have no idea what to expect. Properly filtered hot lights used
between 10 sec and 50 sec would be the most consistent.

Drew,

This time information is so helpful! I wonder whether or not models can withstand light bright enough for exposure without flash? So perhaps it's just doable to directly expose Cibachrome with tungsten lights that wouldn't blind the folk, LOL.

Asher

[Drew Wiley]

Asher - my friend who would know was in a hurry yesterday to pick up a laser and then
get to the job, so I only mentioned the nature of the problem to him. He is extremely
familiar with both Broncolor and big Ciba. But I'll have to wait until he has a little breathing room to discuss this more. The alternative of course is RA4 prints, which expose way way faster; but I don't know if they're making rolls of Supergloss bigger than 32" at the moment (RC paper is of course still available in bigger widths). Hot lights bright enough would probably be intolerable for models.

[SMBooth]

Slightly OT, but of interest, There is an exhibition in Melbourne (MGA) at the moment by John Street who shoots 20x24 ilfochrome. Beautiful images I must say.
http://www.mga.org.au/exhibition/view/exhibition/97

[Nathan Potter]

Nathan,

I hope you are still making Ciba in camera pictures.

What CC matrix? Is it one sheet of material and do you place it over a grey card. If it's done that way then the light is filtered going in towards the grey card and then a second time, reflected off the card and coming to the camera. So I wonder what the physical set up is. It should be that one would use 1/2 the values obtained.

Also can you give examples of exposure details for over cast outdoors, for example or indoors with window light or even flash or tungsten light perhaps?

Do you ever use 80-85 series filters too and what about color meter readings?

Thanks,

Asher

Asher, No I've not done in camera Cibas recently. To try to simplify the color correction needed for the type of lighting used I just made a matrix of different values of filters cut from a spare set of 6X6 Ciba filters. Yes a big nuisance to make but the scheme worked quite well. I used C,Y,M pieces at 0, 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 values taped to a 4X5 cardboard frame using mylar tape. This gave, in the example below, 180 little rectangles of the three CYM combinations. This was placed in contact with the Ciba paper in the camera then exposed at the predetermine time by imaging a large white card illuminated by the light source to be used for the actual photos to follow. Now one of these 180 combinations of CYM sections will produce an essentially neutral grey. Then that CYM value is the filter pack to use. For instance it might be C20, Y10, M30.

But there are some caveats. Those initial values of CYM change as the paper and chemistry ages.
The changes in CYM do not occur in the same ratio. It can be difficult to assess what is a neutral grey within one small rectangle (see pic below). But OTOH Ilfochrome when fresh is fairly tolerant of small changes in the CC filter pack. It would be elegant and more precise to use a color reflectometer to find the neutral rectangle. The sketch below shows the version of the contact printing matrix I used for some images.

http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6110/6289901371_a63c475d1e_z.jpg (http://www.flickr.com/photos/argiolus/6289901371/)
CCMATRIX-2jpg (http://www.flickr.com/photos/argiolus/6289901371/) by hypolimnas (http://www.flickr.com/people/argiolus/), on Flickr

[Asher Kelman]

To try to simplify the color correction This was placed in contact with the Ciba paper in the camera then exposed at the predetermine time by imaging a large white card illuminated by the light source to be used for the actual photos to follow. Now one of these 180 combinations of CYM sections will produce an essentially neutral grey. Then that CYM value is the filter pack to use. For instance it might be C20, Y10, M30.



Thanks Nate for the wonderful info. With the C20, Y10, M30 combo shouldn't one use instead C10, M20 to get neutral without cutting the amount of light down? Or, am I perhaps missing something?

Asher

[Nathan Potter]

Yes, I just used that as an example. In fact there can be several neutral greys in the same test print but at slightly different reflection densities simply due to the proportional combinations of filters, as you allude to. It is fairly tricky to eyeball the purity of the little rectangles so it helps to have an opaque cutout mask over the matrix so you see only one rectangle in reflection with a section of neutral grey standard beside it - and illuminated with the degree Kelvin light you will use to view the print.

Nate Potter, Austin TX.